When good apps go bad: Twitter for iPhone 3.3

Twitter was originally designed to be a mobile service, with updates pushed out via text message. That’s why it only uses 140 characters for messages. Its web page was almost an afterthought.

Today, while it’s often used with traditional computers, Twitter is incredibly popular on mobile devices.CEO Dick Costolo said last month that 40 percent of Twitter users update on the go. And that explains why the company has been aggressive about making sure there is decent software on all mobile platforms for using its service.

Twitter for iPhone is one of its most popular apps. Originally known as Tweetie and developed by Atebits, it was acquired in 2010 and has gone through several revisions. Twitter for iPhone is generally considered the company’s flagship app and has gotten lots of praise for its features and user-friendly design.

That is, until version 3.3 wasreleased last week. Changes in this version have users howling, particularly a new feature called the QuickBar, a black bar across the top of your timeline showing one of the current trending topics. The bar is semi-translucent, and sits on top of updates. In some cases, it may show a sponsored topic, which means you’re looking at an ad.

The kerfuffle caused Twitter to issue an update to the app that will change the QuickBar, but only slightly. Once Apple approves it and you download, it will still show a trending topic, but at the very top of the app, according to MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka.

While I think the QuickBar is annoying, I don’t begrudge Twitter the right to make some money. Twitter for iPhone is free, and there’s a long and healthy tradition of ads in free software. As advertising goes, this is fairly mild. Kafka points out, though, that it gives a clue as to the direction Twitter will take its revenue models, which are bound to include ads in your stream.

That said, I think there’s much bigger problem with Twitter for iPhone than the QuickBar, and that’s in the quiet removal of a feature that’s very important for those who use the app to post links and disseminate news.

Prior to version 3.3, Twitter for iPhone allowed you to choose a variety of third-party services that shorten URLs. Because of Twitter’s 140-character update limitations, it helps to be able to shrink Web addresses to conserve space. Some of these services also provide details about how many times a link was clicked or retweeted, a Web feature commonly known as analytics.

For example, I use bit.ly to shorten links I post to Twitter. The service then provides me details about how my followers – and their followers, via retweets – interacted with the link I provided.

With version 3.3, third-party URL shortening support is gone. Now, long URLs are automatically shortened with Twitter’s own t.co service. While Twitter says the service can help prevent links to malicious sites, it doesn’t provide any detailed analytics. Twitter’s certainly gathering data about who’s clicking what, but it’s not sharing that information with the users who are generating those clicks.

Twitter’s removal of support for third-party URL shorteners isn’t new. It’s no longer in the iPad Twitter, Mac and Android clients. And while there are certainly plenty of independent Twitter clients for all platforms that do support third-party link shorteners, this is a disturbing trend for Twitter.

The data generated by its users’ clicks is clearly valuable to Twitter, and certainly is part of its business model going forward. But if Twitter is going to insist that users only have access to the t.co shortener, it should at least share the data it collects with the individual users who are inspiring those clicks.

By the way, if you’re a Twitter user who’s not happy with the changes in this app, I can recommend three that I’ve been trying and liking – Osfoora, Tweetings and Echofon. All three offer support for bit.ly, and the latter two will let you filter out tweets you don’t want to see. I use them to mute annoying robotweets from services such as Foursquare and Gowalla.

I like and use Echofon…It lets you click on the hashtag comments and other links right from the timelime without opening a new screen that just shows the specific tweet. Also, it has predictive text for your contacts so that you can insert them in a tweet with out looking them up in your list.

Ahhh! This drives me so crazy! I don’t mind ads, if Twitter wants to puts ads on Twitter for iPhone then by all means go for it!

The problem is that the quickbar is even more annoying than a standard ad. No only is it horribly distracting the way it shifts or flips or whatever but it makes the app load way too slow.

And promoted trending topics aren’t the problem. If McDonalds is promoting “eat a big mac” or whatever I’m fine but when it’s something like “Bieber Alert” or “#whatahoeeats” that stuff I don’t want to be forced to see on the top of my tweets.”

Seriously ANYTHING but the quickbar. I’m even fine with having promoted tweets in my timeline.

I don’t want to see trends. If I want to check what people are saying about a particular subject then I will use search. Maybe a paid option to turn off the Quick Bar, if Twitter needs cash at any cost to their branding, because it’s a good app otherwise.

I like women, so I don’t want to see things like bootyappreciationday on my iPhone, that contribute to their objectification. In fact most of the trends on Twitter are depressing.

Also there is the loss of screen estate to the Quick Bar so we can see less messages.

In my experiance the apps always end up with links that dont work on my device, so I end up on the web sight anyways. Some apps are usefull and work for what they do. Such as a quick twitter update or seeing whats trending. I just find myself using the internet on my phone more than the apps.

Twitbird for iPhone is what i use now. it took me a while to figure where the settings are but there are a lot settings options. for instance, can use either bit.ly or j.mp and can either show the name or the username of users on twitter. also can save drafts for tweets like can be done in Twitter for iPhone. Twitter for iPad is still tolerable, TwitBird on iPad is okay also. but Twitter for iPhone has become such a bad jerky waste of software code. Twitter has jumped the shark.

Actually, when it was Tweetie, I paid for both versions. I have no problem paying for a great app (which Tweetie was). But the quickbar is done very amateurishly, and they’ve taken away a bunch of other options and settings that I used.

For now I’m using Osfoora, and I’m not sure I’ll go back, even if they fix it.

No that’s not the problem. Are you paying attention? What we don’t want are ham-fisted, poorly executed grabs for attention in ways that are only driving away users. Ads aren’t the problem. It’s the way they’re being handled.

Yeah, those feature changes are slightly annoying, but far more annoying is that update 3.3 shows nothing but a white screen for 20 seconds before the app crashes. Haven’t been able to use the new app since I updated. Obviously a far bigger issue and it’s affecting a lot of people (search twitter).